Reflections on the 39th Anniversary of the Entebbe Rescue

The murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust while the nations that did not actively collaborate in the genocide stood idly by and did nothing showed that the only way the Jewish people would ever be safe in this world was to rebuild their independent nation and depend on no one else to protect them from their enemies. The ominous specter of a nuclear-armed Iran is just the latest example of this truth; if Israel does not act to stop the threat, no one else will and many--not just Jews--will suffer.

If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs something to inspire him to act or if his fellow citizens need a reminder of what is at stake and what can and must be done, the answer is to look no further than Netanyahu's own family history at Entebbe.

Entebbe--nearly 40 years later, the name still evokes powerful emotions both in those who were there and in those who understand what that name represents. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, terrorists conducted a wave of airplane hijackings but they only succeeded in hijacking one Israeli El Al plane; after the 1968 hijacking of an El Al plane to Algeria, the Israelis solved their hijacking problem by becoming the only country in the world whose civilian airliners had armed guards and reinforced steel cockpit doors (precautions that would have come in very handy in the United States on September 11, 2001).

Mind you, those Israeli precautions did not stop terrorists from trying to hijack Israeli planes. El Al pilot Uri Bar-Lev's quick and brave thinking thwarted a potential hijacking in 1970. When two anti-Israel terrorists attempted to commandeer his El Al Flight 219 from Tel Aviv to New York on September 6, 1970, Bar-Lev calmly assessed the situation, refused to give the terrorists access to his cockpit and sent the plane into a dive that did not harm the strapped-in passengers but momentarily stunned the terrorists. That gave one of the Israeli air marshals the time and opportunity to kill one of the terrorists. The other terrorist rolled a grenade but the grenade did not explode and she was detained. Bar-Lev explained his actions simply: "As long as you know you're not going to allow it to happen, then you'll find the way."

Bar-Lev's heroism was not appreciated at home or abroad. He diverted the plane to Great Britain to seek medical attention for the chief flight attendant, who had been critically injured after attempting to subdue the terrorists. Diverting the plane likely saved the chief flight attendant's life, but almost led to Bar-Lev and the air marshals being arrested for killing the terrorist. Bar-Lev managed to sneak both air marshals off of the plane and on to another El Al plane bound out of the country but Bar-Lev and his crew were detained overnight by British authorities before being set free. Upon arriving in Israel, Bar-Lev was pressured to resign from his job by Israeli security officials who felt that Bar-Lev violated protocol during the crisis (Bar-Lev had asked one of the air marshals to join him in the cockpit during the flight after Bar-Lev thought that some of the passengers looked suspicious) but after Bar-Lev personally called Prime Minister Golda Meir and explained his actions he was given two weeks off and then reinstated as a pilot, with honors for his bravery.

Once terrorist organizations realized that it would be futile to try to target Jews and Israelis by hijacking Israeli planes, they shifted their focus to hijacking other, less secure planes that had Jewish and/or Israeli passengers. On June 27, 1976, Germans from the Baader-Meinhof terrorist organization and Arabs from Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization hijacked Air France Flight 139 and forced the pilot to fly the plane to Entebbe, Uganda. The terrorists separated the Jewish and Israeli passengers from the other passengers; as Benjamin Netanyahu later noted, "(Just) thirty odd years after the Holocaust, German terrorists were differentiating between Jews and non-Jews, keeping the Jews and threatening to murder them." After the terrorists declared that they would start killing hostages within 48 hours if their demands were not met, Israel--acting alone--planned and executed one of the most daring rescue missions ever.

In an article titled Entebbe Memories, Paula Stern recalled those harrowing events:

I was sick thinking of how they had separated the Jewish and Israeli passengers; releasing the Christian ones. That a German terrorist was involved in this separation brought home again the knowledge that the Holocaust will never really leave us. I will forever remember that the French crew was offered the chance to leave with the Christians…and chose to stay. The deadline was approaching. The terrorists were threatening to kill the passengers. At any moment, I expected to hear that explosions and gunfire had been heard coming from the compound.

Stern's apprehension turned to exultation when she learned that an Israeli rescue operation had freed almost all of the more than 100 hostages (three hostages were killed during the rescue operation--Jean-Jacques Mimouni, Pasco Cohen and Ida Borochovitch--and a fourth hostage who had earlier been taken to the hospital, Dora Bloch, was later killed in the hospital by Ugandan soliders) and brought them safely back to Israel:

My heart sang with such joy. I remember crying--but they were tears of relief. I had expected 100 dead, not 100 freed. Yoni Netanyahu--commander of the operation and older brother of the current prime minister--gave his life bringing the passengers home. He epitomized the Israeli army officer. Follow me, he told his men. He led them in and was the first and only Israeli army soldier to fall. He died on the plane flying home, despite desperate efforts to save his life. There is a sense of peace knowing that in his last moments, he must have known that he had succeeded. He had risked all for the freedom of others, for his people--those who no one else but Israel could have saved.

Three years ago, Israeli Brig. Gen. (res.) Joshua Shani, the son of refugees who escaped the Holocaust and the lead pilot in Operation Entebbe, spoke about his experiences during the mission:

We began our journey from Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which at the time was under Israeli control. The takeoff from Sharm was one of the heaviest ever in the history of this airplane. I didn't have a clue what would happen. The aircraft was crowded. I was carrying the Sayeret Matkal assault team, led by Yonatan Netanyahu. I was also carrying a Mercedes, which was supposed to confuse Ugandan soldiers at the airport, because Idi Amin, the country's dictator, had the same car. And I also found room to pack Land Rovers and a paratrooper force.

I gave the plane maximum power, and it was just taxiing, not accelerating. At the very end of the runway, I was probably two knots over the stall speed, and I had to lift off. I took off to the north, but had to turn south where our destination was. I couldn't make the turn until I gained more speed. Just making that turn, I was struggling to keep control, but you know, airplanes have feelings, and all turned out well.

We had to fly very close to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, over the Gulf of Suez. We weren't afraid of violating anyone's air space--it's an international air route. The problem was that they might pick us up on radar. We flew really low--100 feet above the water, a formation of four planes. The main element was surprise. All it takes is one truck to block a runway, and that's all. The operation would be over. Therefore, secrecy was critical.

At some places that were particularly dangerous, we flew at an altitude of 35 feet. I recall the altimeter reading. Trust me, this is scary! In this situation, you cannot fly close formation. As flight leader, I didn't know if I still had planes 2, 3 and 4 behind me because there was total radio silence. You can't see behind you in a C-130. Luckily, they were smart, so from time to time they would show themselves to me and then go back to their place in the formation, so I still knew I had my formation with me...

[After landing at Entebbe,] I stopped in the middle of the runway, and a group of paratroopers jumped out from the side doors and marked the runway with electric lights, so that the other planes behind me could have an easier time landing. The paratroopers went on to take the control tower. The Mercedes and Land Rovers drove out from the back cargo door of my airplane, and the commandos stormed the old terminal building where the hostages were. While coordinating the assault, Yonatan Netanyahu, Sayeret Matkal's commander, was fatally shot by a Ugandan soldier...

We had a little problem: We needed fuel to fly back home. We came on a one-way ticket! We had planned for a number of options for refueling, and I learned from the command-and-control aircraft flying above us that the option to refuel in Nairobi, Kenya, was open. After about 50 minutes on the ground in Entebbe, I gave the order: "Whoever is ready, take off." I remember the satisfaction of seeing plane number 4, with the hostages on board, taking off from Entebbe--the sight of its silhouette in the night. It was then that I knew. That's it. We did it. The mission succeeded.

After my father's death, I found his letters from Bergen-Belsen that he sent to Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek. The letters describe his experiences during the Holocaust, what happened to his family, etc. I won't discuss it here. One of his letters said, "My only comfort is Joshua. He gives me reason to continue."

The reason I mention this letter is because, 30 years later, when I returned from Entebbe, my father hosted a party for me. Family and friends were all there to celebrate the success of my mission. My father was in a great mood. I know what he was thinking, a Holocaust survivor. His son at the time was a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Air Force and had just flown thousands of miles in order to save Jews. It probably added ten years to his life.

The New Antisemitism and the Violence it Incites

For a brief period after the Holocaust, public expressions of blatant antisemitic beliefs were viewed with disfavor in Western society. That polite deference out of respect for the six million Jews massacred by Nazi Germany and her many accomplices gradually waned and, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks declares in the Wall Street Journal, has now largely disappeared:

This year, Europe's Jews enter Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, with a degree of apprehension I have not known in my lifetime. Anti-Semitism has returned to Europe within living memory of the Holocaust. Never again has become ever again.

Two principles of legal writing that I have learned in law school are "Is this true?" and "If this is true, why does it matter?" It is easy to document the reemergence of antisemitism in Europe; orthodox Jews in France are justifiably afraid to publicly demonstrate their faith lest they be accosted on the street and Rabbi Sacks cites a 2013 survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights that revealed that nearly one third of Europe's Jews are thinking of emigrating specifically because of antisemitism (that number is 46% in France and 48% in Hungary, two of many European countries whose native populations enthusiastically participated in the Nazis' program to kill every Jew).

The next question is "Why does the reemergence of European antisemitism matter?" Rabbi Sacks explains:

Historically, as the British Tory MP Michael Gove points out, anti-Semitism has been the early warning signal of a society in danger. That is why the new anti-Semitism needs to be understood--and not only by Jews.

Anti-Semitism was always only obliquely about Jews. They were its victims but not its cause. The politics of hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. It wasn't Jews alone who suffered under Hitler and Stalin. It is hardly Jews alone who are suffering today under their successors, the radical Islamists of Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Islamic State and their fellow travelers in a seemingly endless list of new mutations.

The assault on Israel and Jews world-wide is part of a larger pattern that includes attacks on Christians and other minority faiths in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia--a religious equivalent of ethnic cleansing. Ultimately, this campaign amounts to an attack on Western democratic freedoms as a whole. If not halted now, it will be Europe itself that will be pushed back toward the Dark Ages.

Many proponents of the new antisemitism attempt to cloak their hatred beneath alleged concern for human rights. They claim that they do not hate Jews but that they merely disagree with Israel's policies. Rabbi Sacks states that no one should be fooled by such rhetoric:

Human rights matter, and they matter regardless of the victim or the perpetrator. It is the sheer disproportion of the accusations against Israel that makes Jews feel that humanitarian concern isn't the prime motive in these cases: More than half of all resolutions adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council since 2006 (when the Council was established) in criticism of a particular country have been directed at Israel. In 2013, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a total of 21 resolutions singling out Israel for censure, according to U.N. Watch, and only four resolutions to protest the actions of the rest of the world's states.

Anti-Semitism has always been, historically, the inability to make space for differences among people, which is the essential foundation of a free society. That is why the politics of hate now assaults Christians, Bahai, Yazidis and many others, including Muslims on the wrong side of the Sunni/Shia divide, as well as Jews. To fight it, we must stand together, people of all faiths and of none. The future of freedom is at stake, and it will be the defining battle of the 21st century.

The new antisemitism threatens not only Jews and not only the State of Israel but rather it threatens civilization as a whole. Israel's enemies are barbaric in thought and in deed and if they are not confronted they will wreak havoc throughout the world. Sadly, even many Jews and the State of Israel fail to recognize this truth. On November 18, two Arab terrorists entered a Jerusalem synagogue and killed five people: Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, Rabbi Arye Kupinsky, Rabbi Kalmen Levin, Rabbi Moshe Twersky and Master Sergeant Zidan Sif, a police officer who died in the line of duty while trying to protect the synagogue.

In Responding to the Slaughter, Caroline Glick describes how--in contrast to Israel's weak, ineffective policies--a strong, proud nation would deal with barbarians who butcher rabbis in a house of worship and how a strong, proud nation would respond to the cheering populace that enthusiastically praises those barbarians:

The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred. The only difference between the past hundred years and now is that today our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it harder to pretend away the obvious fact that we cannot placate our enemies.

No "provocation" by Jews drove two Jerusalem Arabs to pick up meat cleavers and a rifle and slaughter rabbis in worship like sheep and then mutilate their bodies.

No "frustration" with a "lack of progress" in the "peace process," can motivate people to run over Jewish babies or attempt to assassinate a Jewish civil rights activist.

The reason that these terrorists have decided to kill Jews is that they take offense at the fact that in Israel, Jews are free. They take offense because all their lives they have been taught that Jews should live at their mercy, or die by their sword...

With regard to the individual terrorists, the government has made much of its intention to destroy the homes of terrorists. While it sounds good, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this punitive measure, which is a relic of the British Mandate.

Rather than destroy their homes, Israel should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of asset seizure.

All assets directly or indirectly tied to terrorists, including their homes and any other structure where they planned their crimes, and all remittances to them, should be seized and transferred to their victims, to do with what they will.

If Israel hands over the homes of the synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice be served. The children's inheritance of the homes of their fathers' killers will send a clear and demoralizing message to other would-be killers.

Not only will their atrocities fail to remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist will contribute to the Zionist project by donating his home to the Jewish settlement enterprise...

Israel should also revoke citizenship and residency rights not only from terrorists themselves, but from those who enjoy citizenship and residency rights by dint of their relationship with the terrorists.

Wives who received Israeli residency or citizenship rights though marriage to terrorists should have their rights revoked, as should the children of the terrorists...

The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.

There is an authentic Jewish response to barbaric terrorism and it is the response that any thinking, feeling person would advocate: total war. In the wake of the Jerusalem synagogue massacre, Rabbi Mordechai Tzion described why total war is just and essential:

We must remember that we are dealing with an enemy. We are at war. During war we are not merciful to the cruel.  One who is merciful to the cruel is cruel to those who require mercy (Tanchuma, Parashat Metzora 1. Yalkut Shimoni Shmuel 1 #121).  We are the merciful and they are the cruel, and when you are merciful to the cruel, you are cruel to your brothers and sisters. This is a war like any other war.  There is a concept of the total war which means that, while we do not look for wars (we are a Nation which loves peace, searches for peace, and loves all people), if someone attacks us, we respond with all our might...

I remember a joke--although it is certainly not a times for jokes--from Meir Uziel, a comedian and grandson of former Chief Rabbi Ha-Rav Ben Tzion Uziel: In the competition for Ms. Ethical among the 200 nations of the world, we always come in last place, since we are the only ones who show up!  We must certainly be ethical, but to our brothers, not the enemy.

During the Second World War, the Allied powers destroyed neighborhood after neighborhood in Berlin, because everyone understood that there was no other way to wage war. Did King Hussein of Jordan deal with Black September with child gloves? No, he killed 17,000 Palestinians and ended his Intifada once and for all. President Assad killed 21,000 Palestinians in one month when there was an uprising in Syria. And when Hamas wanted to take over Gaza, they killed many, many people. This is the language they speak and understand. This is how we must deal with them.

I remember that a terrorist once attacked a woman in Neveh Dekalim. She lay down on the baby carriage to protect her baby, and he stabbed her fifteen times in the back.  By some miracle, someone came and shot him and saved her.  Later, an unethical reporter interviewed the rescuer on the radio and asked: "How do you feel after killing a person?"  He responded: "The thing which I killed was not a person."  I remembered this and quoted it various times.  I once met someone and I said "shalom."  He said: "You don't know me but you quoted me.  I am the person who killed that thing which was not a person."  I said: "Yashar Koach--Way to go.  Your actions followed what the Rambam says in Moreh Nevuchim (vol. 1 #7)."  The Rambam discusses the "demons" mentioned in the Gemara.  He says that a "demon" looks like a person on the outside, but is a wild animal on the inside.  It is more dangerous than a wild animal in that it has intellect.  People periodically ask me: Is the theory that we came from animals true? I answer: "I do not know. I was not there. The question, however, does not bother me. What bothers me is whether we have left being animals."

Michael Freund also understands that the time and place for diplomacy/concessions by Israel toward her barbaric enemies has long passed:

Armed with guns, knives and a meat cleaver, our “partners in peace” shot, slashed and stabbed their victims, leaving pools of blood and horror in their wake, before being eliminated by the police.

It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable deed.

This act of Palestinian brutality was so heinous that even Israelis hardened by decades of terror responded with disbelief. Indeed, anyone still thinking of giving the Palestinians a state should take a long, hard look at the disturbing photos of the synagogue slaughter that are circulating online.

In one such picture, a Jewish man lies dead on the synagogue floor, wrapped in his tallit and tefillin and surrounded by blood stains, evoking scenes reminiscent of the days when the Cossacks massacred our people. It is a startling and distressing testimony to the savagery of our foes, to the bestial depths of inhumanity to which the Palestinians are willing to descend in their war against the Jewish state.

After all, what kind of human being wakes up in the morning, grabs a few weapons, and then walks into a house of prayer intent on maiming and murdering innocent people? Guns were not sufficient for these savages. They employed axes and knives, which are far more intimate and bloody weapons, the kind that require physical contact with the victim rather than the less personal act of pulling a trigger.

If it is possible for a person to strip away the Divine image with which he was created, then the Palestinian terrorists who perpetrated this attack have surely succeeded in doing so.

Frankly, I am tired of the meaningless mantras and barren babble of many of our politicians. The time for tough talk is over. Now is the time for tough action, for measures that will change the course of events and punish those behind this evil deed.

For God's sake, Jerusalem, Israel's capital, is under attack. Stabbings, stonings, premeditated vehicular attacks, rioting on the Temple Mount and now an assault on a synagogue.

The only way to stop this spiral of violence from spinning further out of control is to go to the source, to the root of the problem.

Simply put, it is time to topple the Palestinian Authority (PA) and declare to the world once and for all: there will never be a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.

We must be careful not just to focus on one terrorist attack or even the entire war to destroy first Israel and then Western civilization. It is important to remember and honor the men who were massacred. Zidan Sif bravely fought against the terrorists until they killed him. The four rabbis who were killed were scholars, gentle men of peace; they left behind 24 orphans. The following is reprinted from of the November 21, 2014 newsletter of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim/Jerusalem Chai:

A Plea from the Families of the Kedoshim Murdered this past week by Arab Terrorists

 









The widows and orphans of the four Rabbis who were murdered by Arab terrorists this past Tuesday in Yerushalayim issued a letter calling for national solidarity and unity.  

With broken hearts, drenched in tears shed over the spilled blood of holy men--the heads of our families. We call on our brethren wherever they are--let us come together so that we may merit mercy from Heaven, and let's accept upon ourselves to increase love and camaraderie between each individual and each community.

We ask that every person accept upon himself on this Sabbath Eve (Parshat Toldot, November 21-22, 2014), to set aside the day of Shabbat as a day of unconditional love, a day during which we will refrain from words of disagreement and division, from words of gossip and slander.

May this serve to elevate the souls of our husbands and fathers who were slaughtered while sanctifying God's name. God will look down from the heavens, see our suffering, wipe away our tears and put an end to our tribulations. 

May we merit seeing the coming of our Moshiach speedily in our days. Amen

Signed with a torn heart,

Mrs. Chaya Levin and family

Mrs. Bryna Goldberg and family

Mrs. Yaacova Kupinsky and family

Mrs. Bashy Twersky and family

The Jewish people have always wanted to live in peace with their Arab and Muslim brethren. Through hard work, sacrifice, ingenuity and toughness, the Jewish people have created an oasis literally (in terms of making the desert bloom) and figuratively; as Israeli UN Ambassador Prosor recently noted, "Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, less than half a percent are truly free--and they are all citizens of Israel. Israeli Arabs are some of the most educated Arabs in the world. They are our leading physicians and surgeons, they are elected to our parliament, and they serve as judges on our Supreme Court. Millions of men and women in the Middle East would welcome these opportunities and freedom."

The Arab terrorists who entered that synagogue with hate in their hearts and murder on their minds did not kill the so-called "peace process." That "peace process" never existed in the first place. Judaism is a religion of peace and the rabbis who were massacred were men of peace but none of that matters to Israel's enemies, who will not rest until every non-Muslim is subjugated or killed. This brings us full circle to the beginning of this article: Jew-hatred is the early warning signal of a society in danger; the world's reaction (or, sadly, non-reaction) to the Arab/Islamic world's systematic effort to destroy the Jewish State and to massacre individual Jews is a sorry reflection on the current state of the world.

Appeasement Failed to Stop the Original Nazis and it Will not Work Against Their Modern Heirs

I already offered my take on Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to release convicted terrorist murderers. Sarah Honig of the Jerusalem Post compares Netanyahu to a bad poker player and she asks, "Who's The Sucker?" Here is an excerpt from her incisive analysis about the far-reaching implications of Israel's bad policy decisions and failure to combat widely disseminated falsehoods:

It's staggering stupidity to appear to own up, even if indirectly, to the rampant slander that has today replaced the medieval calumny of deicide.

By repeatedly conceding the basic assumptions against us, we aggravate our own distress and inevitably succumb to the inimical international axiom that we’re in the wrong and that those who would annihilate us are desperate insurgents against injustice.

Any means to which they resort are thereby legitimized and terrorism against Israel isn't entirely cast out of moral bounds. Our accommodating pragmatism effectively removes Israelis, even Jews, from what the world's anti-terror warriors define as terrorism. Insidiously, terrorism becomes the indiscriminate targeting of non-Jews.

We'd therefore do better to go back to basics, proclaim loud and clear that we are in our historical homeland by right; that we were attacked; that the Arabs only conjured Palestinian nationality in order to stake rival claims; that a Palestinian state never existed (i.e. we certainly didn't conquer and subjugate it); that we didn't drive out hapless refugees (who themselves launched the war); that they caused their own downfall by plotting genocide and ethnic cleansing against us; that our only sin is surviving. We can even remind the world of the Nazi legacy of "Palestinian hero" Haj Amin al-Husseini...

Poker, or what Obama/Kerry market as negotiations, can be a form of psychological warfare, a fact which behooves Netanyahu to remember that old casino adage: If you're playing poker and look around the table to see who the sucker is, it's doubtless you.   

Haj Amin al-Husseini, who is widely viewed as a heroic figure in the Arab/Islamic world today, was a Nazi collaborator who met with Adolf Hitler and who recruited 20,000 Muslims to serve in Hitler's infamous Waffen SS. The deep ideological connections between Nazis and Islamic extremists extend back several decades but are largely ignored in mainstream media depictions of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Egypt and Syria are among the nations that gave sanctuary to Nazi war criminals after the fall of Hitler's Third Reich; Syria sheltered Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's second in command, and he helped the Syrians form their secret police force.

Neville Chamberlain's appeasement policy toward the original Nazis had a disastrous outcome and Netanyahu's appeasement policy toward the Nazis' heirs will similarly end very badly.

Releasing Convicted Murderers Will not Bring Peace to the Middle East

"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."--Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

"All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be."--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak out for me."--Martin Niemoller

The isolationist school of thought suggests that what happens in other countries does not matter but the reality is that all people and nations are intimately connected. An injustice anywhere has ripple effects that spread out like a tidal wave. In August 1990, two teenage boys named Lior Tubal and Ronen Karmani were abducted, bound, gagged and murdered, their bodies dumped in a valley. Their only "crime" was that they were Jews. The perpetrators of these horrific murders were captured, convicted and given four life sentences each (they murdered two other people in addition to Tubal and Karmani).

Esther Pollard wrote a powerful essay that explains why Tubal and Karmani's murderers should never be set free. Some people may object that everyone deserves forgiveness. Only the person or persons who have been wronged can offer forgiveness; the primary tasks of a nation's justice system are to punish people who break the law and deter people from breaking the law in the future: releasing murderers from jail represents a huge failure in both regards. Here are wise words about such prisoner releases:

The release of convicted terrorists before they have served their full sentences seems like an easy and tempting way of defusing blackmail situations in which innocent people may lose their lives, but its utility is momentary at best.

Prisoner releases only embolden terrorists by giving them the feeling that even if they are caught, their punishment will be brief. Worse, by leading terrorists to think such demands are likely to be met, they encourage precisely the terrorist blackmail they are supposed to defuse.

The author of that well-reasoned declaration is none other than Benjamin Netanhayu, who is now Israel's Prime Minister; the prisoner release that he has authorized--not just of two murderers but of over 100 terrorists, many of whom are convicted murderers--is a repudiation of everything for which he claimed to stand when he ran for office in the first place.

Don't believe the fiction that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." Those who compare Yasser Arafat to George Washington engage in a very dangerous moral equivalency, failing to recognize critical differences between the goals and the modus operandi of the PLO compared with Washington's Revolutionary War troops. Vladimir Nabokov called such confused thinking "poshlost," a Russian term for which he provided a wide-ranging definition:

Poshlost speaks in such concepts as "America is no better than Russia" or "We all share in Germany's guilt." The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as "the moment of truth," "charisma," "existential" (used seriously), "dialogue" (as applied to political talks between nations), and "vocabulary" (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost.

In Hitler's Charisma: Leading Millions into the Abyss, Laurence Rees notes that every step of the way on the path to genocide Hitler calculated exactly what the Nazis could get away with both in terms of internal opposition and external opposition; when the democratic nations of the world met at the Evian Conference in 1938 and the Dominican Republic was the only one that agreed to take in Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis, Hitler took that as a powerful sign that no one would lift a finger to stop the Nazis from implementing the "Final Solution." Rest assured that today's would-be Hitlers take note when democracies show signs of weakness and/or weariness in the face of evil; the issue is much deeper than the likelihood that some of the specific individuals released by Netanyahu will murder again: when murderers are set free, a climate is created in which the value of human life is cheapened. Hitler knew that Turkey was not punished for massacring Armenians in the early part of the 20th century and that Stalin's Soviet Union got away with killing millions of her citizens in the 1930s; that history of injustice emboldened Hitler to proceed with his plan to kill every Jewish man, woman and child on the planet. In contrast, when German citizens protested Hitler's so-called euthanasia plan--his doctrine to kill mentally and/or physically ill people who Hitler deemed to be "life unworthy of life"--Hitler scaled back the program. Standing up against evil can make a difference, while being silent in the face of evil not only permits but rather encourages even greater crimes to be committed.

Many people scoffed when the year 1984 passed and the world supposedly did not resemble George Orwell's dystopian vision--but perhaps we are already living in that 1984 world without even realizing it, a world in which language and justice have become distorted beyond recognition or salvation. Suggesting that the release of cold-blooded murderers is some kind of justifiable "sacrifice for peace" is sickening and, as Solzhenitsyn powerfully wrote (in reference to the crimes against humanity committed by the Soviet Union), there will be terrible consequences as a result of Netanyahu's shortsighted, cowardly act. Appeasement only whetted Hitler's appetite for conquest and appeasement will predictably have the same effect on the nations and terrorist groups that are not only plotting to destroy Israel but also to destroy all Western democracies; those who do not speak up for Israel--and against Netanyahu's prisoner releases--should keep in mind Niemoller's heartbreaking and prophetic words.